Length of Service: Since 1998
Residence: Montclair

What she does: This year the Writing Center celebrates its 10th anniversary, and Bender has been there since the beginning. She and her staff – graduate and undergraduate students working on a part-time basis, along with faculty tutors – offer more than 3,000 tutorial writing sessions a year as well as writing workshops for graduate and undergraduate students in all disciplines. The tutorials and workshops aim to strengthen students’ skills in research and writing, including critical reading, revising, editing, and proofreading.

A love for the written word: “I grew up in a home with a lot of readers. Ideas were talked about and argued about; ideas mattered,” Bender said. But she discovered in school that writing also was a powerful tool to express and relay her ideas and perspective. She’s been committed to the writing process ever since. Bender believes that it is imperative not only to have ideas, but also to be able to get them across so others can respond and take action. “How well you write often determines your effectiveness, your success.  Students must learn to analyze and organize information and communicate by writing effectively and persuasively, regardless of their major,” Bender said.  “And, writing is a valuable life skill.  The need for writing transcends school and the workplace.”

New initiatives: With the center’s anniversary, Bender is looking forward to some new projects,  including the launch of a writing blog on the center’s website. Bender and staff also will continue to expand their graduate research and writing workshops, which in the last two years have  grown to include Ph.D. students in the College of Nursing and the School of Public Affairs and Administration. Also this year, Bender and her tutors were cross-trained as library assistants to better understand how writing and research intersect. Prior her arrival at the Writing Center, Bender worked as a learning specialist and served as acting director of the Learning Resource Center at Rutgers–Newark, which gives her insight into how students learn.

Volunteering her services: When Bender isn’t at the center, she works with writing teachers and students from the Newark public schools, as well as through nonprofit and community organizations. Bender, along with educators from Newark Project GRAD and volunteers from the Friends of the Newark Public Library, helped initiate and facilitate a two-year writing program, Tell Your Story: A Workshop for Young Writers, which features autobiographical writing and poetry for Newark public school students in grades five through nine. She has been a volunteer at the Friends of the Newark Public Library since 1989. Bender also works as a teacher consultant for the National Writing Project, and she works with Newark public school teachers offering professional writing development workshops each semester.

Some extras: Bender enjoys writing poetry, and since 2002 has been a seminar participant in a Poetry Exploration Series offered through the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. “I like poetry because I can distill an image, get to the essence of a memory, and look again at something in a new way, or really, look at something closely for the first time.” While Bender loves the arts and the creative process – she recently took a print- and book-making class – she also enjoys studying how others create.  “Any time you can look at the writing process through someone else’s eyes,” she said, “you learn a lot about how to write well and about how to tutor writing.”

Special thanks: Bender is grateful for her staff at the Writing Center, the many students and teachers from whom she has learned, and her family, to whom she is indebted for “making me aware of my place in the world.” She also thanks Pat Schneider, a writing teacher in Amherst, Massachusetts, with whom Bender has studied for several years and credits as her biggest influence as a writer.